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June 02 2016

Inish Festival

INISH FESTIVAL

Days until we begin:

Our Artists

MEET OUR ARTISTS

This year we have assembled a stellar line up of both Irish and International acts and speakers for your enjoyment!

Music

Doug Paisley

With the kind of understatement that’s typical of the man, Doug Paisley describes his wondrous new album Strong Feelings as “just 10 new songs. It’s a lot less simple and unadorned than other recordings I’ve made, but it’s just as earnest and straightforward as what I’ve done before.”

This is all in keeping with the Toronto songwriter’s low-key approach to his art, preferring to let his songs speak for themselves. A fact borne out by the nature of the effusive praise given to Paisley’s last effort, 2010’s Constant Companion. MOJO, who included it in their top ten albums of the year and extolled its “rare kind of purity”, declared that “an anti-star is born”. Rolling Stone called it a “nearly perfect singer-songwriter record”, while UNCUT singled it out as “sure-footed and ageless… uncluttered, sad and unerringly lovely.”

Both Constant Companion and 2008’s self-titled debut drew their power from the minimalism of Paisley’s unique take on 1970’s American folk rock. Largely set to simple arrangements of acoustic guitar and piano, it was an unobtrusive style that served to heighten the impact of his beguiling songs about relationships in various states of ruin and flux.

Strong Feelings expands on the same preoccupations, but this time Paisley has also opened up the sound, recording with a revolving band of brothers that includes The Cairo Gang’s leader/guitarist Emmett Kelly, bassist Bazil Donovan, drummer Gary Craig, keyboardist Robbie Grunwald and elusive Canadian songstress Mary Margaret O’Hara. Also aboard is the legendary Garth Hudson, who also made signature contributions to Constant Companion.

Music

Elisa Rodrigues and Pedro Vidal

Navigating her way through the tempestuous seas of jazz, Elisa Rodrigues, one of the most exciting discoveries in Portuguese music in recent years, has already won the respect of critics and fans alike. Following the launch of her debut album “Heart Mouth Dialogues”, she has performed at some of the most prestigious events in her native Portugal, including Vodafone Mexefest, Cool Jazz Fest, Festival MED, Douro Jazz, and many, many more.

Like most well-kept but ultimately uncontainable secrets, news of her talent and charisma soon spread. She captured the attention of the famous British cult band “These New Puritans”, who invited her to work with them on their most recent album “Fields of Reeds”. This collaboration helped showcase her talents to broader international audiences. She also filled in a few more pages in her passport by accompanying “These New Puritans” on their promotional tour. At recent performances at the Barbican Centre in London and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, her voice enthralled audiences. Whilst on this tour, Elisa Rodrigues and “These New Puritans” also performed a number of times as the opening act for world-renowned Icelandic singer Björk.

Elisa Rodrigues is currently in the studio putting together a new album of original tracks, a much anticipated delight scheduled to drop in early 2016.

Music

Martin Tingvall

Over the past 10 years, Martin Tingvall and the Tinvall Trio have become one of the most acclaimed contemporary jazz acts in all of Europe. They have performed in more the 20 countries and won numerous awards for their studio albums and live performances. Their album “Vägen” reached no.1 in the German Jazz charts. Martin’s second solo album “Distance” has been described by German national newspaper DIE ZEIT as “Soul-searching, reserved, movingly serene”. He is renowned for his virtuosity and has drawn comparisons with Kieth Jarrett, Chick Corea and Esbjörn Svensson.

Music

The Whileaways

The Whileaways see three distinct voices combining to weave a beguiling tapestry of harmonies and beautifully crafted original songs. Their sound is true, their performances gloriously engaging.

Noriana Kennedy, Nicola Joyce and Noelie Mc Donnell came to know each other’s singing over a number of years, playing in sessions in the folk melting pot of Galway city. Dipping their toe in the water as a trio, they were hailed as ‘a knockout of the festival’ at the legendary Port Fairy Folk Festival, Australia in 2012. Their debut album in 2013 was an “audacious debut” “rich in its lyrical tapestry” and received four stars in the Irish Times and RTE Album of the Week. Since their first release they have performed on some of the most prestiguous stages such as Tonder Folk Festival, Sligo Live and The Open House Festival in Belfast. The Whileaways’ second album ‘Saltwater Kisses’ released in 2015 ensures that the band continue to cut a confident trail in roots music and woo audiences with their sincerity and perfect simplicity.

Music

Martín O’ Connor Band & the Contempo String Quartet

Since 2001 the current line up of the Máirtín O’Connor band has been steadily evolving into a cohesive musical entity. The three musicians have built a formidable musical relationship over the last few years gigging together frequently as well as collaborating in the studio. The catalyst for this was Máirtín when he invited the others to play on his ground-breaking ‘Road West’ album and again later on the ‘Rain of Light’ recording, much of which went down live such was the musical and personal rapport that had developed between them. Individually recognised figureheads of the tradition, they have built solid reputations as master musicians with astounding skill, diversity and virtuosity. Together they produce a vibrant and musically charged experience that redefines one’s concept of brilliance, verging on perfection. If this musical powerhouse does not get you to your feet, nothing will.

The Contempo String Quartet are one of the most impressive classical outfits you’re likely to see having been called “The ABBA of the classical music”. They are winners of 14 International Prizes and are currently the Galway ensemble in residence and the RTE quartet in residence.

Theatre

Olwen Fouéré

Olwen Fouéré is an actress, writer and theatre artist born on the west coast of Ireland of Breton parents Yann Fouéré and Marie-Magdeleine Mauger.

As a free-lance actress, Fouéré’s has worked with the Abbey Theatre, the Gate Theatre, the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1980 she formed Operating Theatre, an avant-garde theatre company with composer Roger Doyle. She recently established an artistic entity called ‘TheEmergency Room’ for the development of her ongoing projects.

Recent stage credits include Ben Power’s A Tender Thing (Siren Productions); Gerald Barry’s opera of The Importance of Being Earnest, directed by Antony McDonald (Northern Ireland Opera); Maria de Buenos Aires (Cork Opera House); The Rite of Spring/Petrushka with Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre (Sadler’s Wells and Movimentos Festival, Wolfsburg); Terminus (Abbey Theatre and international tour); and her translation and award-winning performance of Sodome, my love by Laurent Gaudé. Recent film appearances include The Irreducible Difference of the Other (Vivienne Dick), Camillo’s Idea by Aurélian Froment (2013 Venice Biennale), and This Must Be the Place by Paolo Sorrentino (Palme d’Or selection, 2011 Cannes Film Festival).

The Herald Arcangel Award, one of the most prestigious awards of the Edinburgh Festivals, was presented on Saturday 16 August to Olwen Fouéré for her performance in riverrun and her sustained contribution to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at a reception at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre. Her latest performance in Stephen Fingleton’s first feature film The Survivalist has received widespread praise from critics.

Poetry

Michael Longley

One of Northern Ireland’s foremost contemporary poets, Michael Longley is renowned for the quiet beauty of his compact, meditative lyrics. Known for using classical allusions to cast provocative light on contemporary concerns—including Northern Ireland’s “Troubles”—Longley’s poetry is also marked by sharp observation of the natural world, deft use of technique, and deeply felt emotion. His debut volume, No Continuing City (1969), heralded the arrival of a new talent from a region which had already produced recognized talents like Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon. However Longley’s early influences were English poets like Philip Larkin, Louis MacNeice, and the First World War poets, as well as masters from the classical tradition. The critic Langdon Hammer has described Longley’s poems as masterpieces of “lucidity, economy, sincerity…by means of meticulous, unpretentious technique.”

Longley’s work engages diverse subjects, including Homeric literature, the landscape of Carrigskeewaun, jazz, Walter Mitty, and the politics of Northern Ireland. On the public and political responsibilities of being a Northern Irish poet, he has commented: “Though the poet’s first duty must be to his imagination, he has other obligations—and not just as a citizen. He would be inhuman if he did not respond to tragic events in his own community, and a poor artist if he did not seek to endorse that response imaginatively.” Reviewing his Selected Poems (1993), critic Fran Brearton praised in particular Longley’s more political poems, noting his “use of a compassionate yet unsentimental voice, and an attention to detail which restores specificity at a point in history when it is most in danger of being lost in abstraction—numbers, dates, death-tolls counted beyond comprehension.”

After a 12-year publishing silence, Longley’s 1991 return, Gorse Fires, won the Whitbread Poetry Prize. Subsequently, The Weather in Japan (2000) won the Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry, the Hawthornden Prize, and the T.S. Eliot Prize. Longley’s recent publications include Snow Water (2004) and Collected Poems (2006). In 2001 Longley was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Poetry

Edna Longley

Edna Longley (born 1940) is an Irish literary critic and cultural commentator specialising in modern Irish and British poetry.

Now Professor Emerita at Queen’s University Belfast, as a lecturer and later Professor of English at Queen’s, Longley was influential in both literary and political culture of Northern Ireland both during and since the years of The Troubles. While she was a teacher at the Queen’s University, the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry was founded. She gained particular renown in Ireland for her public criticism of “depredatory ideologies” both in their political and the literary aspects. In her Lip pamphlet From Cathleen to Anorexia (1990) she was scathingly critical of the identification of feminism with Irish nationalism. At the Yeats Summer School in 1993 she attacked The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing for ‘a propensity to censorship and an obsession with colonialism’, developing those arguments in her 1994 collection of essays The Living Stream: Literature and Revisionism in Ireland, an extended critique of nationalism in Irish writing. She has also been one of the foremost scholars in Edward Thomas studies, publishing two editions of his poetry (1973 and 2008) and one of his prose (1981), and is one of the editors of the planned Oxford University Press series, Edward Thomas: The Essential Prose. Writing in Dublin’s Sunday Business Post, Seamus Heaney called her 2008 Annotated Collected Poems the “definite new edition of Edward Thomas…a crowning achievement by Thomas’s best advocate”.

From 1989 to 1994 she was Academic Director of the John Hewitt Summer School. Trinity College Dublin gave her an honorary doctorate in 2003.

Author

Kevin Barry

Kevin Barry’s most recent novel Beatlebone was awarded the Goldsmith’s Prize for 2015. His previous novel, City of Bohane, won the IMPAC Dublin City Literary Award. He has also published two story collections, Dark Lies The Island and There Are Little Kingdoms. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, the Stinging Fly and many other journals. He also writes for stage and screen and co-edits the annual arts anthology Winter Pages. He lives in County Sligo.

Poetry

Theo Dorgan

Born in Cork, 1953. Poet, prose writer, editor, scriptwriter, translator and sailor. His most recent work includes Greek (Dedalus, 2010), a volume of poetry, and Time on the Ocean: Sailing From Cape Horn to Cape Town (New Island Press, 2010), a memoir. Other poetry collections include The Ordinary House of Love (Galway, Salmon Poetry, 1991), Rosa Mundi (Salmon Poetry, 1995) and Sappho’s Daughter (Dublin, Wave Train Press 1998). He has also published selected poems in Italian, La Case ai Margini del Mundo, (Faenza, Moby Dick, 1999), and a Spanish translation of Sappho’s Daughter, La Hija de Safo (Madrid, Poesía Hiperión, 2001). In 2005 Dorgan participated in a translation project run by Southword Publications during Cork’s year as European Capital of Culture, producing Songs of Earth and Light, translations of the Slovenian poet Barbara Korun (in collaboration with the poet and Ana Jelnikar).

He has edited The Great Book of Ireland (with Gene Lambert, 1991), Revising the Rising (with Máirín Ní Dhonnachadha, 1991), Irish Poetry Since Kavanagh (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 1996), Watching the River Flow (with Noel Duffy, Dublin, Poetry Ireland/Éigse Éireann, 1999), The Great Book of Gaelic (wiith Malcolm Maclean, Edinburgh, Canongate, 2002) and The Book of Uncommon Prayer (Dublin, Penguin Ireland, 2007).

He was the Series Editor of European Poetry Translation Network publications and Director of the collective translation seminars from which the books arose.

He has worked extensively as a broadcaster of literary programmes on both radio and television. He was presenter of Poetry Now on RTÉ Radio 1, and later presented RTÉ’s TV books programme, Imprint. He also served as Co-Director of the Cork Film Festival from 1986 until 1989 (along with Mick Hannigan). He became Director of Poetry Ireland in 1989 and served in this position until 2000. He is a member of Aosdána and was appointed to The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon in 2003. He also served on the Board of Cork European Capital of Culture 2005.

Among his awards are the Listowel Prize for Poetry, 1992. He lives in Dublin.

Artist

Norman Ackroyd

Norman Ackroyd studied at Leeds College of Art from 1956 to 1961, and subsequently at the Royal College of Art, London from 1961 to 1964. Ackroyd has had many solo exhibitions, both in Britain and internationally, including Anderson O’Day; Aitken Dott, Edinburgh; Jersey Arts Centre, Channel Islands and the Compass Gallery, Glasgow. Solo shows abroad include the National Museum of Art, Santiago, Chile; Jan Turner, Los Angeles; Dolan/Maxwell Gallery, Philadelphia and the Mickleson Gallery, Washington DC. Ackroyd has also received several public mural commissions, produced in etched stainless steel or bronze. Recent commissions include Lloyds Bank, London; British Airways, Birmingham Airport; Freshfields, London; Tetrapack, Stockley Park, Heathrow; a bronze mural for the Main Hall of the British Embassy, Moscow; and Lazards Bank, Stratton Street, London W1.

Norman Ackroyd was elected a Royal Academician in 1991 and was made Senior Fellow, Royal College of Art in 2000 and in 2007 was made CBE for services to Engraving and Printing.

Ackroyd lives and works in London.

Author

Alan McMonagle

Alan McMonagle is a writer living in Galway, Ireland. He holds an MA in Writing from National University of Ireland, Galway. He has received awards for his work from the Professional Artists’ Retreat in Yaddo (New York), the Fundación Valparaiso (Spain), the Banff Centre for Creativity (Canada) and the Arts Council of Ireland.

He has published two collections of short stories, Psychotic Episodes(Arlen House, 2013) and Liar Liar(Wordsonthestreet, 2008) and contributed stories to many journals in Ireland and North America including The Valparaiso Fiction Review, Natural Bridge, Grain, Prairie Fire, The Penny Dreadfuland The Stinging Fly.

Early in 2014, his radio play, Oscar Night, was produced and broadcast as part of RTE’s Drama on One season.He is also a contributor to the anthology,Young Irelanders(ed. Dave Lordan, New Island, 2015).

He has just signed a two-book deal with PICADOR and his first novel, Ithaca,will be published early in 2017.

FILM – Deargdhúil: Anatomy of Passion A critically acclaimed intimate study of the life and poetry of renowned Irish poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi, featuring performance artist Maureen Fleming and directed by Paula Kehoe. Followed by Q & A with Paula Kehoe and Vincent Woods

FILM – “A Turning Tide In The Life Of Man” Eight years in the making, this multi-award winning documentary film follows John O’Brien, a small fisherman from Inishbofin, Co. Donegal, and his fight to assert his fishing rights and protect his island. Directed by Loïc Jourdain.

FILM – “Atlantic” Filmed over four years in Norway, Newfoundland and Ireland, this crowd-funded documentary questions the impact of the fight for oil, gas and fish resources on coastal communities; voted Best Irish Documentary at the Dublin International Film Festival 2016; from the director of “The Pipe”, Risteárd Ó Domhnaill.

Interactive talk with legendary English artist Norman Ackroyd. A number of his seascape etchings will be on display over the weekend. In this talk he will elaborate on the inner-workings of his craft with reference to these works.